Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio, it is 8.39, we're at 74, and I am joined by one of our great Geneva Rotary representatives, he's been on this program a time or two, shall we say, and that'll be former president of the organization, Phil Beckley, joining us this morning. Phil, how are you this morning, sir?
Phil Beckley: I'm pretty good today, hasn't gotten too warm yet, so I'm hoping to be a little cooler today, but thank you Paul, I've been called a lot of things but never great, that's good.
Paul Szmal: Well I think you deserve it for the service you've put into the organization over the years, I'm just saying.
Phil Beckley: Thank you. I'm happy to come on today and talk a little bit about what I like to call the Rotary investment in the community.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and this is essentially a conversation about, okay, well we know that the Rotary places service above self, and we know that Rotary is involved in a lot of community functions, but Rotary does a lot of fundraising as well, and that fundraising is to disperse funds throughout the community in different ways, so it's kind of a where the money goes conversation.
Phil Beckley: Right, well simply put, I like to say the Rotary raises money and gives it away, that's one of our important missions, besides having a little fun and interesting things along the way, but this year, the Rotary year runs from July 1st to June 30th, so this year our local Geneva Rotary Club has distributed $57,789 to various community enterprises, which is terrific, I think.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and that's an increase over last year's amount too.
Phil Beckley: Yes, we were able to bring back our service above self gala that we held for many years, and then it fell apart because of the COVID years, and we were able to revive that this year, and that's a significant fundraiser for us. So just to give you an idea of what we invested in, we had $17,500 in grants. The largest of these are $1,000, so there were quite a few of them.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and how is it determined who receives those grants, Phil?
Phil Beckley: We advertise for applications, there's a strict application process that the club, or anybody seeking the grant, fills out, and then we have a Rotary committee that evaluates the grants for the criteria that we stress. The most important thing for our grants program is services that affect children in the community. That's been our priority for years. And then we have some other criteria, and the committee evaluates if the organization meets the criteria and the application is correct, and then we awarded 19 grants this year.
Paul Szmal: So 19 Geneva organizations received funding, and several of these are small organizations, and $1,000 really means a lot to a small organization like that. If you want to go ahead and run down the list of some of those, Phil, be my guest.
Phil Beckley: Absolutely. Okay, for example, there's Geneva Reads, Thrive to Survive, Geneva Youth Lacrosse Limited, Neighbor to Neighbor, the Dove Block Project, Salvation Army, St. Peter's Arts Academy, which we supported for a number of years, great organization. Geneva Center of Concern, Family Hope Center, Geneva Music Festival, that's just not quite all of them, but that gives you an idea that we reach a lot of people that way, and we're proud of that.
Paul Szmal: And this grant program, this is just one of the ways that these funds are dispersed back into the community, Phil.
Phil Beckley: Yes, we also did three scholarships at the Geneva High School graduation amounting to $2,500. You probably have heard of Rotary Camp Onseyawa for children with disabilities, takes place every summer. A lot of people don't realize that Geneva Rotary was really the originator of that camp, and once it got going, it got so big that they realized they needed more help, so we got the counties around here involved, Seneca, Ontario, Wayne, there were clubs in all the counties, but we did $3,900 to Camp Onseyawa, and also at the camp we came up with $2,884 to build picnic tables as a service project for the camp.
And then Rotary every month always celebrates the birthdays of the members that month, and there's been a tradition for a long time that members will contribute to what's called the birthday fund, and that goes to the Geneva Library. It's been in place for years and years, and often some of our members will pledge like a dollar for every year they've been on this earth, and we have a few more mature, I like to say, not older members, so that can be a significant investment.
Another thing that's really unique to our club is our student loan program, which was started many years ago when a Geneva judge left money in his will for Rotary to establish an interest-free student loan program. This gentleman was in Geneva, he didn't go to college here, but he did receive financial help where he went to Cornell, and he appreciated that and wanted to see a program like that here, so that money has been invested over the years, and we give out interest-free student loans for four years, and this year we did $30,000 in student loans, which was very significant.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We had a prior guest on the program talk about that student loan program and how it works and how beneficial that can be to students at Geneva High School.
Phil Beckley: Yeah, it used to be it was both Geneva and DeSales, and then they closed, unfortunately, so now it's just Geneva High School.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Phil Beckley from Geneva Rotary, and we're talking about the impact that Rotary's fundraising dollars has on the community. So are there other ways that funds are dispersed? We've covered the grants, we've covered the student loan program, we've talked about a couple of other things as well.
Phil Beckley: No, that's pretty much it. And the way we accumulate this money to give away is through various projects. You're familiar with our Santa Train Express that takes place in December. We have a golf tournament in the summer, and the Service Above Self Gala, which was in the fall last year, and that's the main vehicles we have for fundraising.
Paul Szmal: And of those vehicles, that Service Above Self Gala returned last year, as you mentioned, after the COVID absence. I take it that is on the books to take place again this fall?
Phil Beckley: Oh, yes. Yep. We're looking forward to it again. It's a great, great event.
Paul Szmal: All right. Well, Phil, thank you so much for filling us in. I always like to give a plug out for people who would like to join the Rotary organization here in Geneva, or maybe one of the sister chapters in an area where they're listening. And the best way to do that is to reach out to your local Rotary representatives. How about for Geneva Rotary? Who would you reach out to?
Phil Beckley: Well, if anyone you know who's a Rotarian can point you in the right direction, our website is GenevaRotaryClub.org, and that has applications and instructions for how to join. Or we meet weekly at Dana's Time Out restaurant, and we meet at lunch at 12 o'clock most of the time. The third Wednesday of the month is usually an evening meeting at 6 p.m. Some of our members still come at 12 that day, but we're working on it. So you're welcome to come anytime to a meeting and just introduce yourself and say you're interested. We've had people do that, and they ended up joining. So the meetings are interesting, and we usually have a program that'll teach you something you probably didn't know about the area. So please come.
Paul Szmal: All right. That's Phil Beckley from Geneva Rotary joining us. Thank you, Phil.
Phil Beckley: Pleasure as always.
Paul Szmal: Yep, that goes for you too, Paul. You're welcome anytime. I appreciate that. Thank you, sir.
It is 848 on FLX Morning.
